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The Politics of Language- Rekhta

Languages live and die with human interests. Language does
not have with in it to carry itself through public apathy. Language cannot survive vacuum and apathy. One of the biggest loss
of the 21st century is the death of languages. While technology has
been one cause of it, religious appropriation and attribution is another
important reason. Suddenly we have Latin for Christians, Sanskrit for Hindus and
Urdu for Muslims.

Absolutist religions have brought clash of civilization to our doorsteps. This reflects in the election of Donald Trump in the US and the
books on Islamic supremacy being in best-sellers in France. It is not totally
unfounded. Technology connects the mankind in unprecedented manner. Therefore,
famines of Bengal in 18th and 19th century could not
cause mass transfer of humanity from Asia to Europe nor could most bloody of
wars in 7th century push people westwards, as much as it could
today. One can easily call names to people who are simplistic and
intellectually brow-beat them, but the fact remains that immigration without
assimilation is invasion, not immigration. There is an old story of Parsis who
landed on the Western coast of India and were brought to the King. When the
King questioned them, placing a glass full of milk in front of the refugees, as
to how do we accommodate you when my resources are not sufficient for my own people?
The immigrant leader took a spoon full of sugar and mixed in the milk. When you
land into another country and insist that the local people change their way of
life and insist on not only insulting rather changing the existing customs and
way of life, insecurity rises. That reflects everywhere.

In the latest edition of Rekhta, an annual event to
celebrate Urdu, noted journalist Tarek Fateh was allegedly heckled. It was
cited as a proof of intolerance on the part of organizers of Rekhta. There are
multiple literary events happen in the country these days, and on all counts,
by selection of panels, selection of guests, Rekhta has been the most honest
effort for celebrating Urdu or Rekhta. Tarek Fateh is a brave journalist and
has suffered much at the hands of authorities in Pakistan. He also calls
himself an Indian, considering, like many either side of the border, the
partition of India and creation of Pakistan on religious lines a grave folly. I
am with him on this, I was with him on changing the name of a road after Aurangzeb.

Tarek Fateh who has vigorously spoken in the past against
Urdu and the attempt of Pakistan government to enforce Urdu, as against Punjabi,
which he loves, did wander off in the festival to look at Urdu literature,
since he was told (as per his tweet) that there were wonderful Urdu books
available there on the stalls. He tweeted however later calling Rekhta an
Islamist festival. I would believe this was his later thought. Given his
history, I would not suppose he would walk into Islamist festival (although
given his dislike for Urdu, I do not know why he would walk in to an Urdu
festival either). I was in the festival the two days, although, I was not at
the place where the incident happened. Probably I was attending the discussion
on Urdu in Global literary market at the time it happened. However, if there
was hugely violent, Islamist environment; I, for one, did not notice it.

I was there. I am a Hindu and proud one at that. There were
volunteers there, I do not suppose all Muslims. No one was checking the
religion of the attendees, No one noticed the saffron thread on my wrist. The
biggest attractions of the event were Dr. Gopi Chand Narang, great Urdu
Scholar, and one Sardar Sampooran Singh Kalra also known to most of the people
as Gulzar. Neither of us were heckled, nor were any of my other co-religionists
at this supposedly Islamist event. Muslims formed a large number of attendees,
there is no denying that. That is possibly because our politicians somewhere
feed this into the mind of Indian muslims that Urdu is a Muslim language. As a
reactionary response to which Hindus tend to shun Urdu, at least in public,
while most Whatsapp inboxes are full of couplets by Ghalib and Meer. Mr. Fateh
was not a speaker at the event, so I am not able to understand how his freedom
of expression was gagged. If at all, we have an example of gagging of Freedom
of expression, it was Salman Rushdie being barred from JLF last year and
Taslima Nasreen being barred this year. Media houses have also take to
organizing literary fest, which are mostly propaganda fest, with propagandist
debates as highlights. Times Litfest had Dr. Swamy and Owaisi debating, neither
of them exactly men of literature, ending with ABVP’s Saket Bahuguna debating
with Kanhaiyya Kumar of JNU. India Today did another literary festival with TV
anchor and journalist interviewing Javed Akhtar, trying to bring the topic time
and again to demonetization and feels-like-emergency narrative in current
government.

Rekhta on the other hand is least pretentious in this
regard. It is pure literature which gets space in Rekhta. And as is the wont of
literary minds, it is quite iconoclastic, if not blasphemous. No one seems to
mind that. Last event, Javed Akhtar mentioned as to how Muslims are wrongly
caught in the stereotype, that they all were descendent of Mughals with all
Hindus as their legitimate subjects. He was upfront, witty and dismissive of
this nonsensical idea, as he referred to the fact that it was mostly deprived,
down-trodden Hindus who converted to Islam and were no way inducted into Mughal
aristocracy. The attendees largely where the same as this year and no one
hooted him. He got a big applause instead. This time Prof. Irfan Habib quoted an
interesting case of UP, where huge hiring was done for promotion of Urdu
language. He plainly mentioned that in a meeting with new teachers he found
that most of them did not know how to write Urdu and had only one thing in
common- they were all Muslims. He also plainly put in front of the people that
since giving job to one religion was not possible due to SC guideline, Urdu
promotion was a façade used by UP government to give jobs to Muslims who knew
nothing about Urdu. At many panels, concerns were raised that attempts were
being made to identify Urdu with Muslims, while Urdu did not came from the
birthplace of Islam. It came from India. It was termed as Rekhta, or thrown away, because it was looked
down by the purists writers of those days who preferred to write in Persian. An
interesting event detailing the journey of Progressive writer’s association, mentioned
an anecdote about noted poet, Majaaz. To a great applause the narrator
explained how when the poet went to Aligarh, for a lock exhibition (Aligarh is
famous for locks), and saw a huge lock at the stall. He asked his friends what
that thing was. When his friends responded that it was a Taala (Lock in Urdu/Hindi), he shook his head and responded
thoughtfully, “Na, Allahtala”. Will
such jokes go in an Islamist event?

An Islamist event will not celebrate Meer who himself wrote about himself-

Meer ke deen-0-mazhab ko, kya poochte ho unne to,

kashka khaincha, dair mein baitha, kabka tark-islaam kiya (What do we speak of religion of Meer,he (Meer) who has put on a Tilak, sits in a temple and has disowned Islam long time back). This man is also called Khuda-e-Rekhta , the God of Urdu, quite blasphemous, no? Can we trust a Hafiz Sayeed to preserve Meer. No Fateh Saab, Fanatics are not cut out to carry forward literature. Rekhta is not an Islamist event.

People have jumped over Rekhta. Outrage builds
over outrage. I would only say, please attend Rekhta once. It is not about Urdu
only. It is about a language. That language is not a Muslim or foreign
language. It is our own language. We made Sanskrit language of Brahmins and
killed it. Let us not do it to Urdu. While in western countries, one is not
considered cultured enough without the knowledge of Latin, in India, pushing
for Sanskrit makes you a Sanghi and pushing for Urdu makes you’re an Islamist.
Mr. Tarek Fateh must not look at India as he looked at Pakistan. Urdu is not a
contradiction to secularism and local language. Both Urdu, Sanskrit and Hindi
are custodians of the jewels of world’s oldest civilization. Languages are too big
and important to be left to religious fanatics. Language needs scholars not fanatics. It is sad that right-wing thinkers are
jumping into the debate and in process, trying to belittle Urdu. This language
has served us well. It gave us writers like Premchand. True writers are bigger
than politics and do not go about returning awards because the government is
not of their liking. Let us
read Urdu, read Ghalib and Meer, and lest you feel offended, instead of
outraging against a language, read Dinkar, Kalidas and Nirala as well. Lost
languages erase the past and history of a civilization, eventually leaving it
rootless. We cannot let this happen to India. A language cannot be appropriated
by a religion or an ideology. Left acts as if literature and all things
cultural belongs to it, in India. Through our own stupidity, let us not substantiate
this fallacy. Religion rides over language and not vice-versa. Religious
writings survive centuries not only because they are true, rather, because they
are written well. Virginia Woolf wrote- “When
I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke around me I am in darkness- I am
nothing.” This is as true for an individual as it is for a nation and a civilization.

Comments

BTW Urdu was thrust upon the common ppl of Pakistan in 1947 and post. Their mother tongue was sindi Punjabi pushtun et. Tarek Fateh hates the fact that elites of Pakistan who were basically from UP and spoke Urdu thrust Urdu down Thier throat ..with little respect for native language.

Eye opener for those who see even language with the glasses of hate. I am a Muslim but never get a chance to learn urdu but am fond of poetry so I take help of Internet to understand it. I got distinction in sanskrit in my 12th boards.Mr Fateh is mistaking in understanding the bond of an Indian towards it's country, culture, language and with fellow countrymen. I was at ampitheatre, at that time and was going to attend Annu Kapoors programme, I saw some people were shouting but nobody was hurting him physically. The volunteers were trying to control them and keeping Mr. Fateh safe. My daughter is studying in Ramjas, today there was a session was planned in which Umar Khalid was called but some people entered with sticks and he was dropped,(as my daughter knew by the time she was there)She came back after her classes.Mr.Fateh was not even called in Rekhta, and as I understand from her tweets it was not a programme of his taste. I don't understand why he was there? Nargis Alam

Hi Nargis, while Tarek Fateh wasn't invited, he was well within his right to walk in. Have no argument with that. My argument is him calling it an Islamic festival. Although Umar Khalid point I can't comment on for he is india hater, protected by laws of country he hates. His team blocked screening of Vivek Agnihotri's movie. You can't block counter view in your fiefdom and seek freedom of expression when you are in other area. Also JNU celebrations of martyrdom of soldiers is totally distasteful. I don't think Umar Khalid is a FoE proponent. But I totally respect your view on language. I do wish we could be as modern as our ancient poets. Language is where our heritage is.

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India, now it is widely celebrated. The festival is primarily of a day of
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the practice, the festival is marked by severe criticism every year by
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patriarchal, regressive and anti-woman. If one considers those rants to be
true, one would believe that there is huge amount of physical and emotional
trauma that womenfolk are subjected to, in order to get them around to fast on
the day. However, if one were to visit
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